Kazuyuki Okitsu is yet to make a big breakthrough in anime but, almost 15 years of career in the industry and he’s a respected name in dubbing and games, with the occasional brilliant role in anime.
Kazuyuki Okitsu
KANJI: 興津 和幸
BORN: March 8, 1980
OCCUPATION: seiyuu, radio host, narrator
HEIGHT: 175cm
A note, this article was written in 2018 and is currently undergoing an update.
Some information below may be dated or not updated.
SEIYUU
Kazuyuki Okitsu was born in March 8 of 1980 in Hyogo Prefecture, located in the Kiki Region.
Having officially debuted in 2000, it was only until in 2006 that the seiyuu did indeed made his first endeavors in the entertainment industry as a RME talent, though after only a year the seiyuu suddenly had a change of heart and signed a contract with Kekke Corporation.
Though not much, in all modesty, is known about what might have led Okitsu to change companies, what we do know is that he spent the first 5 to 6 years out of the radar, and we can only imagine just how hard a task it was for him when he began his career in an active manner.
As much as it one can guess, the seiyuu industry is extremely competitive and being forgiving towards a seiyuu that has been missing in action in not something to expect, at least not that often.
2007 – 2009
Getting back to business
Some years after his debut, Okitsu’s first moment of glory was his first role in anime, as his first year as an active seiyuu would feature numerous roles.
Among them we have some of his first supporting roles in Gintama as Kamemiya, in Clannad, Tetsuko no Tabi, Naruto Shippuden, Majin Detective Nougami Neuro and Moetan as several secondary characters with little to no importance to the main plot of the anime.
Subsequently, in this first year, his roles started to be slightly more important.
Needless to say that we are talking about Vincent Phantomhive, Ciel‘s father in the famous anime series, Black Butler.
Despite the extremely quick appearance of Vincent we could, for the first time, ascertain just how appropriate Okitsu‘s vocal performance is, in fact, it can make one amazed as he portrayed this character with an absolutely soothing and gentle voice, making everyone wonder why he had not shown this talent of his before.
Naturally, the answer is simple, he simply just had not had the opportunity to do so, therefore he took the wide majority of the viewer’s by surprise as he delivered us with an extremely amiable character.
Vicent Phantomhive was, most likely, the start of Okitsu‘s journey of portraying gentle and mysterious characters, which if may say ourselves, is far from being a bad turn of events. Throughout his career, we have been able to count with quite some roles that really fit the aforementioned categories, as we will mention later on.
For the remaining part of the year, though extremely prolific, the seiyuu made appearances here and there in several anime as either minor characters or several random background characters.
Among them we have Hell Girl, TETSUWAN BIRDY DECODE (Laila Rou and others), Library Wars (Yokota), Toradora! (Hisamitsu Noto), Nodame Cantabile series (Theo), Monochrome Factor, Heavenly Haori Fist of the North Star Raoh Gaiden (Gumay and Lily) and finally, Rosary and Vampire‘s second season. 2009 would be the year that indicated his rising popularity.
Roles such as in Asuraku Line (Professor Dobashiya), Guin Saga (Nes and Kalois), Kurokami The Animation (Hermann), NEEDLESS (Inui, Tada and Agato), Basquash! (Man-Z), are certainly some of the roles that made the seiyuu gather the focus on himself, as he gained momentum.
2010 –
Subsequently, Okitsu did indeed manage to get hold of his rising popularity and began making his way to a slightly more stable position in his career, as he had the chance to start winning the “big roles”, at least in comparison with his previous work, which hardly ever consisted on main characters or minor one’s with some relevance to the plot.
One of his most iconic characters can be found in the horror/thriller anime Shiki, as Seishin Muroi, the village’s priest.
As numerous strange things begin to befall the village, different characters are turned into victims of each other’s fate.
One’s fall pray to the unexplained forces causing distraught in the village, whereas others choose to surrender themselves to their fate. That is the setting in which Muroi, a character ridden by his emotional scars and physical one’s, plays a huge role in either solving the problems or perhaps igniting some other desires.
His performance as this character was nothing off the chart, yet for some unknown reason the fans really liked the character, partially due to the fact that Shiki already had the manga previous to the anime adaptation hence why all the hype around the series and characters, still we cannot say that Okitsu did not take this chance to promote his skills and himself as he so desperately needed at the time.
In the same year, he had the chance to portray 2 characters in the famous romance anime Kaichou wa Maid-sama. One of them was Yuuta Utsumi, your typical puppy like teenage boy and Misaki’s (the main character) childhood friend.
Despite being rather devoted to his feelings, he had a hard time understanding that everything needs moderation and comprehending that there are times when a person should just give up.
Though he may at times have resembled your typical and clichéd dumb character, somewhere down the line we understand that that is just his way of attempting to be friendly towards Misaki, though his advances end up in failure, each and every time.
Well, if on one side we had a high-tension character, on the other side, we have the bassist in the UxMishi, the popular pop/rock band which is mentioned in the anime by one the main character’s closest friends, and he is not afraid of telling off Kuga (the vocalist), voiced by fellow seiyuu Kenji Nojima, regarding his behavior towards women, which often as not makes Kuga appear to be a jerk as opposed to the image the fans had of him.
Kou is the most down to earth and gentle member of the band, and in fact, he is also rather kind towards others, though that does not mean that sometimes he gets mad or irritated at others.
However, he did his utmost effort to maintain his prolific year at his best with another important character in the anime Ladies versus Butlers! as the main character, Akiharu Hino that despite his looks is rather considerate, even though his past appears to be quite complicated.
As aforementioned Okitsu has a knack for portraying gentle characters, with the older brother feel to them and that is precisely what we get from the oldest of the Asahina brothers in Brothers Conflict, he has a considerate personality which almost makes his act more like a father of Wataru (the youngest brother) than anything else, though he is in fact his older brother. With his caring and normally soothing personality.
He managed to melt the hearts of those whose favorite characters have all the above mentioned qualities.
Needless to say, that Okitsu managed to get the attention of a lot of fans, though some of his popularity may have been because of the game’s adaptation to anime, yet it feels crucial to mention that even if that was the case, the seiyuu had already managed to perform at his best and meet the fans expectations, hence why the response to his role being so positive.
Though Okitsu has a certain talent to portray affable characters, we cannot forget that sometimes he also gets different types of characters, namely the more complicated to handle with such as Jonathan Joestar in JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken.
Despite his early life being the embodiment of a rough start, Joestar manages to get around in life.
Gunzou Chihaya from the Arpeggio of Blue Steel -Ars Nova- series was another role worth mentioning as Okitsu portrayed the teenager boy which has a lot of responsibilities as he is the captain of the Sentoku I-401 submarine.
Though he appears to not be prone to express strong emotions and him acting stoic and collected, the underlying truth is that he simply has an amazing control over his emotions, hence why he appears to seem so adult-like.
However, like many things, teenagers cannot have full control over their emotions, therefore when he actually has an outburst he is just like any other boy of his age. One of the main causes behind this sort of behavior is the fact that he grew up to be like an adult too fast.
In 2014, he appeared in Nobunaga Concerto as Tsuneoki Ikeda, one of the most iconic characters portrayed by him that year.
Following along with Nobunaga’s (voiced by fellow seiyuu Mamoru Miyano) whims as he does not understand his duty making Tsuneoki have far more to worry about as an adviser than he had ever had.
In fact, the issue with Nobunaga is that his character cannot make him do what he ought to, instead Tsuneoki spends most of his time yelling and running around trying to clean up after Nobunaga instead of doing anything else.
Throughout the years, Okitsu has had the amazing opportunity to not be tied down to one particular type of character nor genre of anime, in other words, we rarely see him being typecasted.
There’s some instances in which Okitsu is found portraying a similar type of character, but that doesn’t extend for long periods of time and, most certainly, hasn’t defined his career.
For example, in My Wife is the Student Council President!, his character, Hayato Izumi, is quite the serious ones, which lost his chance to be the Student Council President and has instead become the Vice-President as it appears to not be such a bad predicament after all.
All in all, Izumi appears to overall be a self-sufficient teenager. And though the genre is slightly different, the same can be said about his role in Prison School as Reiji Andou.
Despite it being a peculiar choice, he took this chance to gain more experience and improve himself, nonetheless.
In the same year, he portrayed Nagare Hisui, the Green King in both the movie K: Missing Kings and the anime K: Return of Kings.
Though for the most part of his appearance in the movie, Hisui talked through a green parrot, in the anime we cannot say the same.
Hisui has to be one of the villains Okitsu has portrayed that might have annoyed people for his spot on performance.
Despite not being able to move around as freely as he would enjoy Hisui shows that his plans will not be hindered by that at all, as a matter of a fact, him not being able to do so only makes him more unpredictable as he can communicate through a parrot, among other powers.
With 2016, he reprised his role from Ozmafia!! in the anime adaptation of the game as Kyrie, the mischievous main character with as much mystery behind him as he has a sharp tongue fearlessly saying the truth to another person.
In general, Kyrie is a slightly different character, partially because you should never judge a book by its cover.
While on the outsider he may appear to be extremely helpful and gentlemanly, do not be mistaken, seeing as as soon as you relax yourself too much while he is around you will lead to him taking advantage of that predicament and chances are that he most likely will strike you with his sadistic and sarcastic remarks in the hope of getting an interesting reaction from the stimuli.
It is not by chance that Kyrie mentions that his primary hobby is to bully people and that he enjoys watching their victims’ reactions.
While it is extremely good news for Kazuyuki to have numerous roles on a constant basis, we must say that it must have been overwhelming, at times. In 2015, the seiyuu played two very different characters.
One of them being Seishirou Inumine in Starmyu, a boy with a rather hard to handle type of personality as he often does not listen to what others say and may end up being reckless or forceful.
All in all, he is proudful of himself and the group (Team Hiragi) and loves to sing whenever he has the opportunity, proving that he simply is too immersed on what he likes and often tends to be overenthusiastic about his passion.
The second character being Nagamasa Midori in Aoharu x Kikanjuu. If you thought Okitsu only knew how to portray the same old type of character then you are gravely mistaken.
Nagamasa is far from being a sane person, in fact he should quickly get treated as he frequently shows psychotic tendencies.
Throwing in a freebie into the package he is a full fledged sadist, therefore any opportunity he has to bully someone he will grab it.
In fact, most of the interactions between him and his team mate and also colleague in the hospital, Takatora Fujimoto (voice by fellow seiyuu Ryohei Kimura), are marked by him physically and verbally abusing Fujimoto.
Luckily for him, his team mate shows quite the satisfied face when that happens as he appears to not be that bothered by that sort of behavior.
Adding in another character to Okitsu‘s repertoire, Saku Hagita is one of the main characters in the drama/romance anime Orange, as well as in the movie Orange: Future.
Hagita is the stereotypical Japanese character with the glasses, he enjoys reading manga and is calm and quiet, for the most part.
Most of his interactions are either hilarious or just plain comical as him and Azusa Murasaka are constantly bickering and bring about that lively ambiance to the group. Hagita, like the other members of the group, is Kakeru’s friend (the main character) and they are all fighting for one thing.
There is a certain event that they must prevent from happening at all cost, and while at the beginning it appears to the viewer that Naho Takamiya is doing all the work to avoid it, we quickly get to understand that the rest were just working from the shadows.
With a new year, he remained occupied with several roles. Kazuya Nachi in the music/romance anime Fuuka was one of them, as the seiyuu portrayed Nachi, Fuuka and Yuu’s upperclassmen, which despite his wishes to have the main character join the track and field club, ends up somehow being a part of their band, seeing as Fukka manages to persuade him into playing the drums for them.
In the same year, he got a role as Ido in ID-0. Ido is slightly different from the characters Okitsu had been playing as he is a stoic individual that has lost part of his memory and therefore his first memory are of being a prisoner in an exile ship.
One of his most popular roles among 2D idol fans is Banri Ogami in the IDOLiSH7 anime adaptation. He reprised his role from the popular smartphone rhythm + story game.
Ogami is one of the managers working for the Takanashi Production, IDOLiSH7’s label.
Though it has been some time since he last had a role in which the character was kind, it did not surprise us at all the fact that he proficiently dominated the job creating the image of Ogami being not only reliable but also surprisingly, or not, perceptive of others around himself.
These are the supporting roles Okitsu portrayed which consisting of his role in Otome Youkai Zakuro (2010), in the popular mangaka anime Bakuman (Kim Songyuu as well as Ichiriki Orihara) (2010-2013), in Sengoku Basara 2 (2010), in Durarara!! (2010), in Sekirei: Pure Engagement (2010), in The Qwaser of Stigmata (2010).
We can also count with his presence in Betrayal Knows my Name (2010), B-Daman Crossfire (2012), Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing (2012), Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic (2012/2013), Devils and Realist (2013), Black Bullet (2014), Charlotte (Kazuki Tomori) (2015), Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso (2015), Handa-kun (Takao Kawafuji) (2016), B-Project: Kodou*Ambitious (Atsushi Daikoku) (2016), Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru (Hachisuka Kotetsu) (2016), MARGINAL #4 the Animation (2017), Sengoku Night Blood (2017) and Knight’s & Magic (2017).
Regarding any type of work in the narration department, it is worth mentioning that he’s pretty active, counting with dubbing done for series/movies such as TVCM “Snack World”, 3DS “Sonic toon Island Adventure”‘s Game Introduction Movie and WiiU “Sonic Tune Ancient Hidden Treasure”‘s Game Introduction Movie, just to name a few.
In the drama CD’s department the same can be expected as some of his works entails “Coffee & Vanilla” as Hiroto Fukami and “Bloody Mary” as Takumi Sakuraba, just to name a few.
Radio
On this note, it certainly is not a surprise that Okitsu has had his fair share of radio shows he has hosted or been invited to attend to in his repertoire. In 2015, he made several appearances in “Sato Takuya no Yaremasu“.
Needless to say that the show was a complete chaos, between him mentioning some amusing events that he has experienced such as his manager and other staff advising him to be friends with Sato, and Sato ending up realizing that the same with has happened to him, we had our fair share of laughter.
On the same show, Sato explained that, when he first got into the industry and was working in a project with Okitsu, he one-sidedly declared him to be his rival and admitted he did not like him since he also wore glasses and therefore his “character” was overlapping with his.
Amidst all this confusion we also got to understand just how much Sato admires and respects him, as well as just how passionate he really is, in fact the seiyuu even goes further and expresses his love for voice acting.
So all in all, Okitsu‘s appearance, if anything means nothing but pure amusement and guaranteed laughter throughout the show as we could equally notice with his presence on the Aoharu x Kikanju‘s radio show hosted by Maeno and Matsuouka.
Though not on the same level as with Sato, he managed to make any and everyone laugh with just a few minutes in on the show when Maeno asked him if he was a sadist or a masochist and the conversation went off track, leading the topic to a not safe for work approach.
His appearance in the JoJoraDIO hosted by Yogi Ueda is also memorable as he could, once again entertain us with his funny remarks and interesting banter with the host.
Kazuyuki has plenty of other radio show appearances / gigs, with radio having a robust expression in his career as a voice actor.
Some of the radio shows he has been a guest or hosted are Shiki Web Radio “Foreign Village Hall Village People Broadcasting” (2010-2011), Last Exile Kartakhal Communication 7th Ades Federal District (2012), K of radio (2015), Prison Gakuen Radio (2015), AYANAGI Star RADIO (2017), Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru’s radio show (2016) and Okitsu Kazyuiki no Dozo Okitsu Kainaku!, which, as the name sugests, Okitsu is the host.
Games
When it comes to work in games, he is extremely prolific, especially in otome games, having had a peek in work on those from 2012 – 2018.
We can genuinely count on some pretty famous names, a fact that leaves us unfazed as it has been noticeable that Kazuyuki Okitsu does indeed have far more known names in his repertoire than one would have initially had though of, yet it comes to us as no surprise whatsoever.
His first role in a game throws us back to 2007, as aforementioned 2007 is the year that he became an active seiyuu, with Gyl, a living doll, in Will o’ Wisp, a game with a plot focused on the 19th century London.
Despite his androgenized visuals, Gyl is merely a charming man with feminine facial features. As Gyl, Okitsu plays one of the main characters, though not the protagonist.
In 2008, he reprised his role in the fandisc Will o’ Wisp ~Easter no Kiseki~. Following his first roles he played Setsuma Ashir, as mythological character with over 2000 years in Kanuchi – Kuroki Tsubasa no Shou.
With the game adaptation of the anime Toradora, Kazuyuki could not miss the cue to reprise his role as Noto Hisamitsu on Toradora! Portable.
In 2009, he would play one of his first roles as a mobster.
In Death Connection, Okitsu portrays the character called Medicis, a gentleman which believes above all else in honor, though he is apart of a mafia.
Medicis is in charge of the strategy and the financial affairs as he is the most level headed of the members.
Despite appearing to be polite and gentleman, when confronted with more personal situations Medicis has revealed to be rather bashful, therefore avoiding any sort of possible contact that may lead to topics of the same sort all together.
Another role worth mentioning is Masaomi Asahina in Brothers Conflict.
Though he reprised his role in the anime adaptation, in 2012 this would be the first time he was portraying the caring and older brother like type of character, therefore he must have been eager to quickly begin his job.
Needless to say, Okitsu managed to make the oldest brother of the Asahina household emanate a full fledged gentle and loving personality which loves to take care of others as he frequently does, especially with the youngest brother Wataru, voiced by fellow seiyuu Yuki Kaji.
From the turn of events it is no surprise that the seiyuu maintained his prolific career in the game department and in the same year he was casted in Confidential Money ~300 Nichi de 3000 Man Doru Kasegu Houhou~ as Charles a metro-sexual designer living in New York City.
Though we have already mentioned his role as Kyrie in the anime of Ozmafia!!, we cannot forget to mention his role in the game, which does not change at all, from what we saw in the anime.
Ruthless with his words, Kyrie does not hesitate to state the fact that he is displeased with something, even if he does not truly think that, and in those cases he merely enjoys observing other people’s faces as they react differently to his actions and words.
All in all, Kyrie is a prankster and a bully which we would best categorize as a sociopath seeing as he enjoys manipulating others to monitor their reactions, and above all else he is a well-known sadist therefore his gentle demeanor is just for show, do not be fooled by it.
Equally worthy to mention is his role as the main character in Geten no Hana Yume Akari. Kanbei Kuroda is Hideyoshi’s strategist which despite his tender age is extremely difficult to read as he constantly appears calm and cold to others.
His role as Maririn in Chronostacia is far from amazing, though he is portraying a rather flamboyant man with a feminine appearance, the usual gentle Maririn can randomly throw in a cold gaze here and there, which leaves us to believe that there is more to this character than we had initially thought.
In 2015, Okitsu would be portraying Leon in Reines des Fleurs. Leon is a reckless prince with a wild appearance, essentially his is driven by his urges and emotions therefore he enjoys indulging in any types of pleasure.
We can count on Okitsu in other games such as S.Y.K ~Renshouden~(Seitentaisei) (2010), Desert Kingdom (Don Ficche) (2010), Hanaoni ~Koi Someru Toki Towa no Shirushi~ ( Mitsuaki Shizuma) (2011), Eikoku Tantei Mysteria (Mycroft A. Holmes) (2013), Princess Arthur (Kay) (2013), Akai Suna Ochiru Tsuki (Shoukyou) (2013), Snow Bound Land (Alfred) (2013), Geten no Hana Yume Akari (Kanbei Kuroda) (2013), Ayakashi Gohan (Manatsu Serigano) (2014 & 2015), Vinculum Hearts ~Iris Mahou Gakuen~ (Keith Knight) (2014), Walpurgis no Uta ~Walpurgisgedichte~ (Ushio) (2015), Kagami no Naka no Princess -Love Palace- (Noin) (2015), Ephemeral (Ray) (2016).
Music
Despite his constant presence in the music industry with character songs and whatnot, Okitsu has not debuted as a singer and therefore one can solely indulge in his vocal performance with character songs, at least for the moment.
His first steps in the music industry date from 2009. The song he sang was the ending theme for the game Toradora Portable, in which, alongside other seiyuu from the cast including Junji Majima.
One project that we indeed have to bring to the table is Blue Steels, a 2.5D unit created with the members of the Arpeggio series.
Aside from Okitsu, the other two members are Eiji Miyashita and Shinobu Matsumoto. One of their best songs is Egau Mania, which far from the fact that it has a rather up beat instrumental piece has a rather catchy melody and fits the three member’s different singing styles.
He shone bright in this track with his talent for singing brimming.
Despite the fact that this unit was so official that it even has a video clip for “Egau Mania” stands to prove just how much impact this unit caused, though it did not appear to have prevailed in surpassing the test of time as their presence dissipated after they released Under the Blue Sky, arpeggio and Unchanged place.
Egau Mania and Hajimari no Owari were released after, and the former had the videoclip released with the Trident THE LAST LIVE「Thank you fou your“BLUE”at Makuhari Messe」.
Other projects include Jailbreak Boys, Team Hiragi, Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru, Idolish7, Ozmafia!!, Brothers Conflict and Death Connection.
Variety
It is not surprise that Kazuyuki Okitsu is a seiyuu who takes great pleasure in doing his job, yet what we can notice is that his passion for what he does does not end there.
Though it has been told by many other seiyuu that he has a lot of dedication for voice acting, including Takuya Sato, the seiyuu has been, since his debut, making an effort to have exposure in all different departments of the entertainment industry, as opposed to solely focusing on promoting himself with his roles in anime and games, thus his immense exposure in radio shows or, as we will explain momentarily, in variety shows.
Much like his appearances in radio shows, his presence in events and variety shows comes off as him being an extremely humorous person which lightens any place he goes to.
A prime example of that is the 2016 edition of the Otomate Party.
That year, Okitsu participated in the event as the seiyuu portraying Leon in Reine des Fleurs. As it would seem, he hadn’t been to an Otomate Party event for 8 years, hence why his overjoyed demeanor.
Yet another event in which we can count with Okitsu‘s presence is Jinrou Jinrou Battle ~ jinrou VS yusha ~.
It surely is a already established fact, for those who are fans of his for quite some time now, but fellow seiyuu Junji Majima is frequently told that he resembles him, be it for their at times similar sounding voice or for the fact that both uses glasses, the fact that the two have been a topic to bring up whenever a lot of seiyuu are gathered is far from being forgotten.
To add even more to this event, for those who did not know, he does not know how to lie and apparently when driven to a corner by others he begins to sweat buckets.
Now, the amusing part of the Jinrou Battle is that after getting kicked out of the game, because he was too suspicious, Okitsu began to expose his concerns regarding Majima‘s behavior towards him.
The end result was Kazuyuki feeling betrayed by his senior, while expressing his dissatisfaction regarding the outcome of his participation in this game.
In 2017, he made an appearance on Bar Renta and there he discussed what it took for a men to be considered sexy only to conclude that there needs to be a dangerous man type of aura for a men to be considered sexy, among other subjects.
Aside from his amazing performance, reading the advised manga, we could once again ascertain just how much he enjoys his job and adores interacting with other fellow seiyuu.
Facts
Mistaken nationality
It is not uncommon for first meetings to go a little awkward but from that to escalate to Tomoaki Maeno believing that Kazuyuki was Chinese, things must have gone awry quickly.
Luckily enough, Maeno only disclosed his thoughts on the Aoharu x Kikanju radio show in which he admitted he truly believed the first time he had met him that he was Chinese with a really good knowledge of the Japanese language.
Black Butler’s theatre adaptation
It is no surprise that Okitsu is Vincent Phantomhive‘s voice, yet what some of the fans did not anticipate was for the actual seiyuu to give his voice to the theatre adaptation in 2016 with Black Butler ~ NOAH’S ARK CIRCUS ~.
Event MC
It is usual for seiyuu to host events related with their job, yet what is not that common is for a seiyuu to be the host of other types of events as he has been. “The 79th National High School Baseball Tournament Opening Ceremony” as the moderator and Fuji Television’s “Cirque du Soleil Alegría 2” are just some of his jobs.
Hope you have enjoyed this month’s Seiyuu Digest and be sure to tune in for next month’s.
